About Me

Publications: Japji Sahib: The Song of the Soul by Guru Nanak translated by Ek Ong Kaar Kaur Khalsa. Anand Sahib: The Song of Bliss by Guru Amar Das translated by Ek Ong Kaar Kaur Khalsa. Available through www.sikhdharma.org.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Anand Sahib: Maps of Reality in Translation (and the first Five Paurees)

Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa, Wahe Guru Ji Ki fateh.

The weekend of New Year’s, the largest snow storm in 25 years hit New Mexico. Six inches of snow around my home and (thank God) a refrigerator full of food. It had been my intention to take that four day holiday weekend and really pour myself into completing as much of the Anand Sahib translation as I could. Three and a half years ago, I finished translating Japji Sahib and had begun to work on Guru Amar Das’s Anand Sahib. Being snow bound with no where to go and nothing else to do, God’s grace, the translation came into a magical synchronicity. And this draft – this sixth or seventh draft in three years – took on a life of its own. As a writer, I know when “I” write – it doesn’t work. But then the writing writes me, then it does. Three and half years of challenge and research and revision; of frustration and confusion and trying to shift my brain to see what Guru Amar Das was actually talking about. But during this snow-bound weekend at the end of 2006 – the translation wrote me and I knew it was complete.

Over the next couple of weeks – every few days – I would like to share five paurees from the translation with you. To generate conversation. Discussion. Even that dreaded word – debate. It’s done – but I am also open to suggestions for edits, for changes, for tweaks. And I thought – why not share it with all of you – who love to read what I write and because of that love, I keep writing.

But before we embark on the actual discussion of the translation, I want to offer a framework of how – over three and half years – the translation evolved. Some of you may have been around in November of 2003 when I posted an exuberant and perhaps slightly simplistic essay about translating Japji Sahib into English. That essay (with minor revisions and edits) is reposted below for you to review – or to make new your acquaintance with it if you haven’t seen it already. What’s most important in that essay is the conclusion that translating Gurbani into English depends upon text, subtext and spiritual experience. All three. So selecting one English word for one Gurmukhi word often may not be sufficient to convey the totality of the meaning.

The issue with the Anand Sahib over time became a much more subtle and challenging issue. Because the Anand Sahib encodes a kind of map of human reality that is very specific and, in some ways, very technical. Most of the translations that I’ve read in English don’t paint that technical, specific universe. And it took time for me to understand what the problem in translation was.

Let me search back through my dusty memories of literary theory – and outline an issue with language that relates to “maps.” Words do not indicate meaning independently. Words creating meaning because they are defined in relationship with each other. “Heavy” and “Light” have meaning in the context of each other – and need the relationship with each other to map an entire dimension of reality called “Weight.”

As always, the physical aspect of how the meaning of words are interrelated is the most basic and easy to penetrate in a language. But when words are mapping emotional territory, mental categorizations or –the most subtle – spiritual experience – then it becomes a very different problem. There are dozens of words in Gurmukhi signifying the Ultimate or Divine Reality. Yet they all get translated as “God” or “Lord.” There are a range of words in Gurmukhi relating to sound and frequency – but they get translated as “word.” It’s a problem. It’s a problem because what gets lost in the English translation is that map of reality. The way those words work together, illustrating and defining a world together.

As I began to study this issue deeper and deeper, the analogy that came to me was a physics one. In physics – there are so many terms to define a quantum reality. “Proton, “Electrons,” Neutrons,” “Quarks,” “Strings,” – oh my goodness – so very many terms. Because the more physics studies reality at the level of the quantum field, the more discoveries are made, the more relationships are discovered. And then words are coined to indicate relationship and reality both. The part and its place within the whole.

So imagine a physics textbook being translated into another language. And what the translators decide to do is use the phrase “atomic particle” every time one of these precise words is used. So a sentence that might read: “An atom is made of protons, electrons and neutrons.” (OK – all you scientists out there – this is from my high school science course, so I’m sure the definition has changed since then. But humor me here.) The sentence then would get translated as:

“An atom is made up of atomic particles.”

The translation, per se, is not incorrect. It is correct in a sense. But because the effort was not made to translate and explain “proton, neutron and electron” – something got lost. Knowledge got lost. Detail and technical understanding and relationships between the parts got lost.

Now imagine that same text book continuing the discussion about quarks and strings and whatever else there is – and all of those terms simply being translated as “atomic particle.”

How much more knowledge has been lost? Detail. Technical maps. Relationships. The ability to penetrate a much deeper level of reality and therefore – understand and command it.

This is what’s happened with Gurbani.

So many terms indicating…something. Some map of human experience and the Divine and the power of Sound to awaken us to the Sacred. It’s all gotten translated as “God” and “word.”

Not entirely incorrect. In a sense. But what has been lost in translation?

So to translate the Anand Sahib was a step more than simply text, subtext and spiritual experience. To translate the Anand Sahib was to attempt to understand those terms in the context of the map of reality the Guru was describing. The words: Anand, Bani, Guru, Shabad, Sach, Amrit, Naam, Har, Ananhat, and others. What did they mean – not in English equivalents – but in relationship with each other? What world, by playing together, where they describing? Because if you just look at English equivalents, you loose the way those words are working together and defining each other. And this was the problem translating the Anand Sahib. The map of reality created by the English language and the map of reality created by Gurbani are not the same map.

So what sources did I draw on to try to discover and understand this map?

Dictionaries – incomplete, yes, but still they gave me an initial direction.

Lectures by the Siri Singh Sahib

Discussions with Dr. Balkar Singh

One brief and beautiful meeting with the late Bhai Avtar Singh. Me, asking questions through his son, Bhai Kultar Singh, trying to bridge generations and cultures, languages and spiritual experience.

As always, looking at it from the inside through meditation

Is the map complete? No. It’s just begun. But what’s important is that this translation of the Anand Sahib is not about translating a word of Gurmukhi into a word of English or even a line of Gurmukhi into a few lines of English. It’s an attempt to understand that underlying map of reality indicated by Gurbani and communicate it in proportional relationship through the English language.

Which is why this translation will seem very different in places than other translations.

At some future point, I’ll post some of the sources, references and conversations behind translating these terms and mapping them the way that they’re being described here. But not today. For today – here are the first five paurees of Guru Amar Das’s Anand Sahib. By the grace of the One. So grateful for your thoughts and feedback.

Anand Sahib by Guru Amar Das

There is a state of consciousnessWhere every actionReflectsThe reality of the soul.

I've been reading your beautiful translation of Anand Sahib almost 40 days now. Thank you, your book has really inspirated me to do it daily.I was wondering, if could you recommend any recorded version of the original (to start practicing along it)?

Sat Naam. Thanks for your comment. Grateful to hear that you are finding the translation useful. At the moment, I do not have an Anand Sahib recording to recommend, unfortunately. But I will keep my ears open for one. Thanks again for your comments, and please let me know if there is any other way I can be of service.